Our experts have some airtight advice on stopping your loaf from going stale – and even freshening it up again – but whatever you do, keep it out of the fridge

What’s the best way to store bread? Beeswax wraps, plastic bags, fridge – I’ve tried everything except a bread bin.
Nancy, by email
“When bread is baked, what happens is that all the starch in the flour expands and takes in all the water,” says Sophia Handschuh, co-founder of Sourdough Sophia in London. That’s why the crumb turns all soft and fluffy. “When you pull the bread out of the oven, as soon as it touches any surface it will start to dry up, which is why bread goes stale; the starch doesn’t like being kept in the air.”

To combat this, Handschuh stores her loaf at room temperature in a greaseproof paper bag (ie, the one you bring it home in): “That’s probably the best way – no plastic. And, yes, you can use beeswax wrap, but that’s expensive and you shouldn’t have to go and buy some just for storing bread.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

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© Photograph: Nazgul Anarbekova/Getty Images

© Photograph: Nazgul Anarbekova/Getty Images

© Photograph: Nazgul Anarbekova/Getty Images

"What is bread?", Haddaway did not sing. Is it expensive? Do you make your own, or purchase? What's your preferred sandwich filling? What makes for a good supermarket loaf of bread? Do you like toast as much as Paul Young? With less than 10 weeks till Christmas, are you contemplating seasonal breads? Are these really sandwiches? Or talk about what's happening in your mind, your body, your house, place or life as this is your free thread.

A thrifty and delicious crumble-like autumnal treat, a bit like a cobbler … or a buckle … or a grunt …

We have a family tradition of making our daughter a fruit pie of some sort for her first day of school each September. Last year, it was a simple apple pie, but we intend to make our way through the myriad heritage desserts, from crumbles and crisps to cobblers, buckles, pandowdys, grunts, slumps and sonkers. This year, we made a brown betty, a wonderful, crumble-like dessert made with stale bread. We kept things seasonal with apples and blackberries from the garden, but any combination of fruit works really. I sweetened this one with maple syrup, but use your sweetener of choice: each adds its own unique flavour.

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© Photograph: Tom Hunt/The Guardian

© Photograph: Tom Hunt/The Guardian

© Photograph: Tom Hunt/The Guardian

Maybe it's the back-to-school vibe that comes every fall but doing a "fall reset" every year, where you tweak some of your habits, or ditch ones and start new ones altogether, is becoming more of a Thing. Some take more of a practical focus, others take things slower. If you're doing one, feel free to talk about it in here - or, since this is a free thread, about whatever you want.

Our wholegrain hero sorts the wheat from the chaff in the search for a simple pleasure: a satisfying sandwich loaf

• The best supermarket sourdough

I’ve broken my strict, like-for-like approach this week in the interests of just finding a really good sliced wholemeal sandwich loaf. Alas, most of these are made to the standard Chorleywood process, with each one a cardboard replica of the other and with only nuanced differences. However, I did find two with exceptional flavour and one with a notably good, firm texture that’s ideal for spreading stuff on; to my surprise, several have an impressive lack of additives, too, and they all score well on value.

The Chorleywood process is an industrial method for making bread in just three and a half hours using high-speed mechanical processes and chemical additives. It was developed in the 1960s, and now accounts for about 80% of the bread made in the UK. If you’re looking for palm oil-free loaves with zero additives, emulsifiers or preservatives, sandwich loaves are hard to navigate, but there are some that fit the bill – just check the label.

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© Photograph: Robert Billington/The Guardian. Food styling: Robert Billington.

© Photograph: Robert Billington/The Guardian. Food styling: Robert Billington.

© Photograph: Robert Billington/The Guardian. Food styling: Robert Billington.

These highly crunchable cheesy bread balls are a great way to use up odds and ends

Sadly, I’m never going to be able to recreate the cheese and bread balls I made a few weeks ago, because, of the four cheeses used, I recognised only two of them: a bit of gorgonzola and a slice of precious Montgomery cheddar, bought from Da Corrado, a stall on Testaccio market. The other two lumps of cheese, both wrapped in white waxed paper and both quite dry, were, I think, a piece of grana padano and the end of the pecorino we brought back from Umbria. But I can’t be sure, because I didn’t really examine them. Even if I had, it would have been hard to guess; the description “heels of cheese” is appropriate here. What I do know, however, is that the combination of those four grated cheeses with two eggs and enough breadcrumbs to turn the mix into a soft, malleable dough made for fantastic deep-fried balls.

The inspiration for using up the uncertain contents of the cheese box was pallotte cacio e ova, which translates as “little cheese and egg balls”, a typical and much-loved thing in both Molise and Abruzzo, which were, in fact, one region until 1964. Pallotte are resourceful, and were surely invented as a way of using up scraps of cheese (almost certainly local pecorino) and bread. Whatever combination of cheese you use, though, the important thing is to add enough soft white breadcrumbs – anything from 80g to 120g – to turn the mixture into a soft dough that you can then mould into balls, but not so compactly that the tenderness is lost. Like meatballs, cheese balls benefit from a rest in the fridge, so they can firm up before frying. The rest in the fridge also ensures that they are cold, which is important, because the thermal shock of the cold surface meeting the hot oil helps create a crisp shell.

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© Photograph: Rachel Roddy

© Photograph: Rachel Roddy

© Photograph: Rachel Roddy

School's out? Back to school? Summer school? In the USA, kids have been back to school for about a month now. Is school in or out where you are? Were you excited to go back to school or longing for school breaks and vacations? Did you go to summer school? Do you love new school supplies? Tell us about school breaks, favorite teachers, or anything at all (except politics) - it's your free thread!

Bonus question: a school year ritual is picture day, when everyone gets their picture taken for the yearbook or class photo collection. Got any class photo stories?

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